Whether you are an entrepreneur, manager, teacher, parent, coach, or simply a friend, if you want to be successful with other people, you must master the art of appreciation.
Three kinds of appreciation
If you want to be a real pro at appreciation, you want to learn which kind of feedback makes the most impact on the person you are delivering it to. One easy way is to ask the person to remember the time they felt most loved in their life. Then ask them to describe it to you. You can ask some follow-up questions such as “Was it something they said, something they did, the way they touched you? Was it the look in their eyes (visual), the tone of their voice (auditory), the tenderness of their touch, or the way they held you as you were dancing (kinesthetic)? Once you determine if the person is primarily auditory, visual, or kinesthetic, then you can purposely direct your feedback that way.
Appreciation as a secret of success
Another important reason for being in a state of appreciation as often as possible is that when you are in such a state, you are in one of the highest vibrational (emotional) states possible. When you are in a state of appreciation and gratitude, you are in a state of abundance. You are appreciating what you do have instead of focusing on and complaining about what you don’t have.
Your focus is on what you have received, and you always get more of what you focus on. And because the law of attraction states that like attracts like, you will attract more abundance — more to be thankful for — to you. (The more you are in a state of gratitude, the more you will attract to be grateful for.) It becomes an upward-spiraling process of ever-increasing abundance that just keeps getting better and better.
Think about it. The more grateful people are for the gifts we give them, the more inclined we are to give them more gifts. Their gratitude and appreciation reinforces our giving. The same principle hold as true on a universal and spiritual level as it does on an interpersonal level.
* Source: The Success Principles by Jack Canfield